Telomeres, Telomerase, and Disease

Telomeres, caps on chromosome ends, have been associated with aging, cancer, and now heart disease. Learn more at my other science and health abode, A Hearty Life.

Last year’s winners of the 2006 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research–Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak–won for their work on telomerase, the enzyme that synthesizes telomeres. From their commentary on telomeres and telomerase (pdf) in Nature Medicine, October 2006:

In 1988, the sequence of the human telomere was
identified as simple repeats of TTAGGG, very similar to the Tetrahymena repeats. This and the identification of human telomerase sparked research in two areas: cellular senescence and cancer. …Carol, in collaboration with Calvin Harley, then found that telomere shortening does indeed occur in human cells in culture. This is due to a lack of telomerase expression and a consequent inability to maintain normal telomeres. If telomerase is expressed in these cells, telomeres do not shorten and the cells do not show senescence. Thus, short telomeres can limit the ability of cells to divide, indicating that telomerase inhibition might limit the
growth of cancer cells.

Image: National Institutes of Aging, Aging Under the Microscope

Tags: telomeres, telomerase, elizabeth blackburn, carol greider, jack szostak, albert lasker award, genetics, genes, dna, diseases, illness, health, aging